The organization’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, participated prominently in the international meeting, where he stressed the commitment to support the region’s countries in surmounting the development crisis.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ratified its support for Member States in the final stretch to fulfill the 2030 Agenda, at the meeting of the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2025 (HLPF), which took place through Wednesday, July 23 in New York under the auspices of the global organization’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The UN regional commission’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, participated prominently in the international gathering, where he stressed the commitment to support the region’s countries in surmounting the development crisis and underlined the urgency of reaching agreements and sharing experiences to overcome the lag in fulfilling the global Agenda.

According to ECLAC’s figures, at the current pace, only 23% of targets are forecast to be achieved by 2030 in the region; 41% are moving in the right direction, but too slowly to meet the established threshold; and fulfillment of the remaining 36% of targets has either stalled or is backtracking as compared with 2015.

In this scenario, ECLAC’s highest authority participated on Tuesday, July 22 in the plenary session Regional Perspectives on SDG Implementation, where he warned that Latin America and the Caribbean is caught in a trap of low capacity for growth, which includes low job creation and stalled poverty reduction.

He emphasized that growth is closely tied to the fulfillment of several of the SDGs, including poverty reduction and the creation of decent work. He noted that the region slashed the poverty rate from 50% to 27% between 1990 and 2015; however, that positive trend stagnated during the period known as the “second lost decade” (2014-2023), a stage that also marked the lowest job-creation rate in six decades.

He added that the impact of the pandemic and the cascading global crises exacerbated difficulties for a region that, with high debt levels, has seen its fiscal space further reduced.

“In this complex context, ECLAC supports its Member States to overcome these development traps and strengthen institutions’ Technical, Operational, Political and Prospective – or TOPP – capabilities. We do this through our singular convening power, technical assistance and intellectual leadership for rethinking, reimagining and transforming development models in the region,” José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs affirmed.

During the plenary session, Peru – the country serving as chair of ECLAC in the 2024-2026 biennium – presented the conclusions and recommendations arising from the eighth meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which took place on March 31-April 4, 2025 at ECLAC’s main headquarters in Chile.

At the start of his participation in the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2025, on Monday, July 21, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs participated in a special event entitled “Accelerating Social Progress to Boost SDG Implementation,” organized by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary stressed that decent work is a source of dignity for people and, as such, is key to well-being and peace in communities and countries. He specified that in the region, an average of 48% of the population works in the informal sector, and many countries are above that average, with 60% or even 70% or more of people in the informal economy.

“Tackling this challenge is both a matter of social policy as well as economic growth and productive development policy,” he stated, adding that inclusive growth will be elusive as long as productivity remains stagnant, informality predominates, and millions of women and young people lag behind.

Later that day, the Executive Secretary inaugurated a side event organized by ECLAC, entitled Latin America and the Caribbean in the Final Five Years of the 2030 Agenda: Territorialization and the Role of Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) to Accelerate Progress Towards the SDGs. There, he highlighted that the vast majority of the region’s countries have taken on the SDGs as a State commitment, in close collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders.

He noted that between 2016 and 2024, 32 of the region’s 33 countries reported on their progress in the appropriation, follow-up and implementation of the SDGs by presenting at least one Voluntary National Review (VNR) at the HLPF. He also stressed that the 65 VNRs presented to date constitute a repository of information, knowledge, best practices and lessons learned along the way to 2030.

“To fulfill the promise of the 2030 Agenda, cooperation’s time has come. Only through integrated, inclusive and coherent coordination between all actors, levels and sectors will we be able to create synergies and be more than the sum of our parts,” he declared.

During his participation in the HLPF 2025, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary held bilateral meetings with the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed; Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Li Junhua; ambassadors Bob Rae, President of ECOSOC; Gustavo Adrianzén, Permanent Representative of Peru to the UN; and Paula Narváez, Permanent Representative of Chile to the UN; as well as with other authorities and key actors.